Good Twin, Evil Twin
by RD Rivero
Summary: Just when you thought you understood the Thunderkittens, yet another mystery unfolds itself. This one's not for the kiddies. char. death, incest, yaoi, gore, violence


Published at the Treasures of Thundera Group April 7, 2000

_:taken from my original author's notes:_

Here at long last, my most evil creation to date is complete. I feel exhausted. If you only read the first few chapters, no, if you don't read it to the end, you'll get the impression that it's nothing more than wierd story but it's much more than that -- disturbing among other things. I appologize in advance for the gramar/typo. errors. I can never seem to catch them.

* * *

**"Good Twin, Evil Twin" by RD Rivero (2000-04-07)**

[Part One]

What they could see of the river was a straight length of currents with a mild 'S' crink near the exact center of the field of view. The water was calm and blue, very clearly blue and what waves rippled the surface glimmered and shined in the sunlight of the noonday sky. The river stretched from one end of the horizon to the other and at both extremes the form faded into a dense mist, into a cloudy fog that completely obscured their sights even from on u p that high.

WileyKat and WileyKit directed their hover-boards lower, lower, lower until they could almost skim the surface, until they could feel the cool spray of the flowing river. On either side of them the jungles of third earth spread in ever-growing entangled abundance. The first few layers of trees could be made out errorlessly but of what was hid in the recess beyond that remained in dark, shadowy oblivion. The ground was black in fertility and dotted here and there by small groups and sparse bundles of grassy flowers, craggy moss and a knee-high underbrush.

The upper canopy was no longer in their view but they could still see the treetops sway through the action of the animals whose habitat that was while hopping and leaping one branch to the next. Though the hover boards produced a low murmur and though the river was itself quite noisy, the two could hear well the sounds produced and emitted -- diffused -- throughout the environs.

The greenery ended abruptly with the spread of a yellow plane, covered in mounds of gray rocks. Dead and brown-dried plants hung down the sides of those edifices like spider webs, delicate, like fingers of death, thin. A cold wind caromed across the open land and those eerie vines spread out open in the air but did not come off the rocks on which the roots and the leaves had adhered through the ages onto the eroded faces of the monoliths. The flat was also adorned by numerous holes that vented a vast network of subterranean caverns that those two enjoyed to explore often.

In the distance all around and all over the bare peaks of the forbidden mountains loomed intolerably tall into the white sky. No longer the bright blue of morning, no longer so warm, the air was cold, the heavens had amassed dense, evolving clouds that rolled and meshed together into each other in wild formations.

WileyKat was tired but oddly enough his heart raced. He sat himself and his hover-board down on the side of one of the taller of the monoliths. The thin vines hung down from an extended ledge in much the same way a weeping willow would. The yellow grass in the immediate vicinity had been pressed down flat firmly, softly. He saw his sister walk though the waist-high, yellow grass that swayed and danced violently in the omnipotent wind. She had mischief on her mind but his attention was elsewhere.

A dark shadow passed through the vegetation in the distance.

Under one of the larger, looser boulders was the circular opening to one of the caverns below. He had discovered it that last time he had been there. He stuck his hands and arms in and felt around. Along the inside walls of the opening was the rough metallic suggestion of a rung ladder. For some reason, for no reason he then stuck his head into the hole. He saw down the incredible length of the tunnel the faintest hint of a red aura -- a warm, red aura.

He lifted himself up and turned around. His sister was no where. He could not find his hover-board. The sky alternated in momentary flashes of brightness and mild shadows formed while the clouds passed before the sun. The wind that had ruffled the scene produced an eerie sound that echoed everywhere and uplifted a scent, an aroma of unknown, woodsy quality.

The shadow in the distance moved away -- not closer -- moved away into the trees.

WileyKat pondered the significance of the hole again and decided silently, without fanfare, that he would enter. At first his fingers and his toes could find and fit neatly into the rungs of that imbedded ladder but after a while, after he was so deep, so deep, he could not hold himself up any longer. He was heavy, his movements were slow and sluggish, he felt that familiar rushing sensation in his stomach before he had actually fallen.

The tunnel had seemed to have been deeper than what it actually was. Lo and behold he fell onto his back in a small chamber under the ground. The rocky, dirty walls glowed red. Not by light, not by fire, but by an illumination that was totally and completely -- indeed deliberately -- inhuman. The light itself throbbed, the walls throbbed, though he was not inside a room, though he was inside the abdomen of a firefly, a demonic firefly.

The wind howled and echoed through the tubular passage he had fallen in through.

WileyKat began to look around. There was only one opening, only one passage way but he dared not -- no. Behind the misshapen, jagged outline of the orifice was nothing but absolute darkness, so black, so black he had mistaken it for a wall of rock. And then there was the sound -- the breathing, the walking.

A presence was approaching.

He stepped back, treaded over the loose rocks and dirt of the floor, of the glowing-red chamber, back, back, back until it appeared at last.

"What are you?" WileyKat tried to hide his face under his hands, tried to cover his eyes, tried to go blind if only, if only just never to see that, thing, again.

The figure stepped yet closer from the formless currents of the enveloping darkness.

He tried hard but he had to see: the thing looked like a man but that was not all for there was another man who stood behind, right behind, back-to-back but even that was not enough, both men, both figures, were deformed -- the bodies twisted in intertwined spirals into and around each other. The thing had four arms, four legs and walked in the slowest, most peculiar gait and then and only then did he realize why: the 'front' legs that he saw belonged to the man at the back while the 'back' legs belonged to the man at the front.

The face he saw was colored green and hairless, the only features were deep, folded wrinkles, the eyes were buried under those masses of skin, the nose that he saw were only two small holes punched into the face, the lips were thin -- the mouth was a slit, barely open, barely moving while the figure was talking -- the chin was small and seemed to be buried abnormally into the head.

"No, stay back, stay back, you're horrid!" WileyKat stumbled until the cavern wall stopped him. He began to sob, he began to crouch into a upright, fetal position. "What are you?"

"I am evil. I am formless."

WileyKat looked up. The thing had changed.

He saw himself. He saw himself exactly and behind that was his sister, not bent around one another but two separate beings that continued to act in unison.

The two turned around, walked around abruptly.

"I am good," the WileyKit-image said. The jaw had been smashed and shattered and hung limp, lopsided. Teeth were missing and bent out over the lips though those might fall out at any moment. The neck was split wide open and he could see clearly bloodied and moist internal structures. The left hand was missing the thumb.

"I have lost my mind, I have lost my mind, I have lost my mind."

* * *

[Part Two]

"WileyKat, wake up! Wake up. Wake up, Wileykat! Oh, by Jagga, wake up!" Her voice trailed into an explosion of tears and of sobs.

"What? What is the," he began, "WileyKit?" He stood up, he put his hands around his head. His eyes ached, his temples throbbed. "What is it, Kit?" She held his forearms tightly in her grip and he looked down on her. Her clothes were bloody, torn, ripped. Her body was bruised. He was confused and shook his head. "What happened, Kit, was there an accident?"

By causality he looked back down on the flattened ground. The hover-board he had slept next to was missing.

WileyKit tugged him away slowly for he was groggy and still somewhat disoriented. Her hands were wet with blood and in her motions she had smeared him and his clothes. He was dragged several yards away from the sanctity of the rock monolith, through the tall, yellow grass to the fringe between the plane and the forestry.

The hover-board was there all right, it was there, smashed, shattered. "I had an accident."

"But you're not bleeding, but you're OK."

"Look."

She pointed to dark mass below the largest section of the wreckage. WileyKat bent down and removed the metal shrapnel. He uncovered it, he uncovered it and turned and threw up.

"I couldn't stop it. I was coming down too fast. I couldn't stop it. I crashed right into him. I sliced him half then I crashed into the trees."

She sat down next to him. She wrapped her arms around him while he rocked back and forth.

"How could I have been so reckless? How could I have been so foolish?"

"It's not your fault, Kat, I did it."

"No! If the others ever found out? If the others ever knew?" He looked around the scene while the wind blew and howled up above. "We have to hide the body." She stared at him silently, wild-eyed. "Help me drag it into one of those holes. We'll dump it inside. We'll cover up the ditch with some rocks. No one, not even Liono will ever find out."

The twins took away the hover board and placed it into one of the gentle riverbanks that lined the nearby-shore to wipe the blood away. The body was another problem. It had not been cut as neatly in two as WileyKit had thought. While most of the chest was exposed, the ribs and the spine were pretty much intact. The face and the other features, however, were too doused in blood and torn and ripped by the impact that the body was unrecognizable. She would not look at it so she took the hands and arms and walked in the lead while he grabbed the corpse by the legs.

He saw that the left hand of the body was missing the thumb but thought little of the matter.

The hole, it turned out, was not large enough, the body would not go through. With his hands he clawed away at the rim until it was just wide enough that the upper torso went through. He stood over the body and began to jump up and down. After each bounce he pushed the victim further into the tubular passage.

A strange sound, a tear, a rip followed.

"What was that, Kat?" She stood up against the rock formation, her eyes welled up with tears, her lips curled, her hands before her open mouth.

"The body must have finally broken in half." He spoke coldly. Then with one last heave the corpse fell through entirely, he himself almost went down with it had he not extended his arms to break his fall. His sister tried to reach out to help him but he did not need that. He managed to lift himself up from the ditch.

There was another problem. The hole was too big to cover with the rocks that were nearby. Then he got an idea. With his sister's help he was able to drag the tall, rock monolith but, clumsily, the two did not have a good hold and the stone fell to the side.

"WileyKit? Are you OK?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine."

Which was odd because she had been standing right in the path of the rock's trajectory. It should have landed on top of her but by some force, by some magic she was then effortlessly standing next to him.

"You moved out of the way so fast."

She did not respond. Her eyes had a strange, faraway look to them. For the first time he realized that she never ever really looked at him.

* * *

[Part Three]

WileyKat sat at the edge of the water and of the dry land. The broken parts of the hover-board were at his feet. He wondered, after all, she had a board of her own, why had she used his? Suddenly he was distracted by the sound of splashing and giggling. His sister had stripped -- her clothes were wet and wrung, hung on the ends of thick, dried stumps -- and had taken a dip in the strong waters of the river.

Her hair was wet and clung to her head closely, conformed to the mold of her form entirely. Her ears were visible, clearly visible. Her eyes, so dead, so dead, still sparkled in moisture. Her face was painted in a devilish, in an evil smile that oddly enough retained the faintest hint of innocence. She gradually stood up and the rest of her body came into view.

He could see in their entirety her small, supple breasts. He had noticed that she had begun to grow them a long while ago but for some reason they had not enlarged much lately. He wondered how long it would take them to be the size of Cheetara's but he kept that to himself. Her furry chest, her flat stomach, he smiled and almost laughed at her belly button, then she turned before she could stand up entirely and submerged -- disappeared back into the river to rejoin the rest of the nymphs, no doubt, he thought.

He wanted to go to her but feared that she would never understand, that she would only take it the wrong way, he cursed his body, how it would always get in his way.

WileyKit resurfaced directly before him and fell down upon him, into his arms. He lay on his back in the mud. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her cheek.

"It'll be all right, Kit."

"What do we do now?"

He looked into her eyes, he left his hands on her back and pressed her body yet closer, yet deeper into his.

"Take your hover-board back to Cat's Lair. Tell them I was in an accident but that I'm all right, tell them my board broke but that I'm OK and that I'm on my way back home on foot. That'll be the end of it but if they ask what happened I'll say the truth. I'll say that the board crashed into a tree."

"You are so good to me," she said, she began to cry once again.

"Don't be sad."

He had lost it. So close and he had lost it. He was happy. She ran her hands across his body and he got it back again and what was more was that she knew and that he knew that she knew. He was nervous, utterly nervous. She laughed and kissed him once on the lips -- much to WileyKat's astonishment -- before they parted.

* * *

[Part Four]

The sun set in a brilliant aura, like a swan fading into music.

Back at Cat's Lair, hours later, the adult Thundercats dinned quietly on the meal that Snarf had taken the whole day to prepare. The round table was abound with plates full of meats bought from the market, vegetables hand-grown from the nearby gardens and, for desert, the mythical candy fruit picked fresh from the bushes. Throughout the room -- the darkened room whose walls were lined with windowed view of the starry night, whose air was vented briskly cool to combat the oppressive summer heat, whose only light came from green-glassed fixtures in the high ceiling -- the sounds of cutting, chewing and drinking echoed in unison to the seductive odors emitting from the kitchen.

"Since I finished first, I'll begin," Panthro spoke gruffly, forcefully. The others turned their eyes to him while they finished their food. "Repairs to the Thunder Tank are nearing completion. I'm sorry, that it's taken me this long -- I've been inundated with complaints -- even from Snarf! -- that things have slowed down quite a bit here, that maintenance has taken longer and longer to finish and, worse, that I may have lost my edge." Everyone was silent, Liono put his cup down and nearly formed an inaudible gulp. "Well, if I haven't seemed to have been on my feet lately the answer is simple. Tygra and I," at the last moment he caught himself, "Tygra and I have finalized the plans for a new defense system with multiple-personal vehicles and weaponry for us all. Since we discovered the old mines and abandoned factories of first earth, I have made one crucial and critical discovery after the next. Trust me that when I'm done there won't be one more complaint lodged against me!"

He was about to howl or growl some more but Tygra stuck his hand out just in time to stop the panther. He stroked his friend's exposed chest -- over his beating heart -- open for all to see, open for all to know. Neither Panthro nor Tygra acted on the merits of their conscious, restrained minds but the tiger's consolation worked. Panthro merely slammed down his cup on the tabletop -- an act that could have shattered the glass, spilt it contents everywhere in an explosion, perhaps even cut himself up badly but which only produced its desired effect -- the other Thundercats were stunned dumb.

Without another word he got up from his seat, looked to his left, to the only empty chair in the room and stormed out. There was no door to slam -- or else he would have done that too -- rather he faded into the darkness of the interior.

Everyone looked at Tygra.

"Um, well, I," he began fidgety, he shifted in his chair that only then seemed to have turned entirely and unbearably uncomfortable. "I have studied the technology of first earth and I believe that there is, um, much there that can be useful. I believe that understanding it and using it, um, will, um, make us stronger than the, um, mutants." He tried to loosen his clothes around his collar. The tiger was hot and sweated. Beads of liquid profused the fur of his mane, arms and the rest of the parts of his body both covered and uncovered. Liono was about to speak when: "I've finished several building designs for the, um, Wolos and the Berbils. And I have spoken to, um, Willa, about the security systems around the territory."

Liono had sat still all the while. He saw that Tygra's eyes fell fixed on the empty chair across the table from him. Not Panthro's.

"And you, Cheetara?"

She looked up to him abruptly like if she had been caught in an act of deviance -- albeit in her mind only. "I'm worried, Liono, why don't you try the sword again."

The Lord of the Thundercats complied. He stood up to properly unhilt the mystical weapon. Back on the chair he inspected the object. They Eye of Thundera had not changed and there was no growling coming from the sword. "The boy is fine," he said at last, "there is no danger."

Cheetara shook her head in compliance. "WileyKat's education is going through another one of its lulls. He gets distracted, he dazes off into space when he should be at work. He listens, of course, but by his eyes I know his mind is elsewhere. Sometimes I've caught him talking to himself and on more than one occasion I've seen him --" she put her head down into her hands. "Every year, at about this time, it happens, every year, year after year since -- I suppose that it's only natural. He's growing up, his body's changing and all, but instead of getting better he only gets worse. I sense something, something foul about him but I dare not subject him to hypnoses or read his mind or anything else out of fear of what horrific memory that might unleash. Remember that he knows more, much more about what really happened than we know and he had never once talked about it, thought about, made reference to it -- sometimes repressed memories and feelings can come out in drawings, writings, in anything for any reason, but not with him as though nothing had ever happened."

"Is there no therapy? No, um, medication?" Tygra asked, conformable that the focus of attention was no longer on him.

"The remedy the victim must administer himself."

"That boy needs to learn a trade, if he is to become a truly useful member of this team. He had one more year of general education and it must be fruitful, Cheetara," Liono said. He looked at her: she had nodded 'yes' but her eyes were fixed on that empty chair but then, just then she looked down to her left hand. "Tygra, I want you to take that responsibility."

"I, Liono?"

"Yes. I want him to learn discipline and I think so too that you would benefit much from caring for him in that way. No -- it would be good for the both of you. You are both Tigers, somewhat and the boy clearly need someone like him to look up to, someone else like him to admire."

"I, um, would gladly do it but --"

"Excellent. Start off easy with him. Get to know what he likes and then school him around it, on it, hone him in on it."

"But you know, um, what Panthro thinks of him --"

From behind the wall in the darkness of the vast, winded passage, WileyKat heard well the full force and brunt of what the adults had said.

"You leave Panthro to me," Liono said. WileyKat stepped boldly into the room. "And stop placating him like that, you'll only encourage that kind of behavior."

"Hi, Kat," Cheetara said.

The boy walked up to her and held her hand while she sat on the chair. He leaned over and gave her a kiss. He heard a giggle and stopped and drew back. He looked around the room but he could not see WileyKit.

"She must be somewhere," he thought to himself. "Hi," he said back to her.

"WileyKat," Liono said. He then stood behind the boy and put his hands on his shoulders while he pulled him back further from the cheetah. "You're late."

"I know, but don't you know?"

"Know what?"

"I had an accident. I crashed my hover-board into a tree and broke it."

"Um, won't Panthro be glad to hear that, too," Tygra said under his breath but the adults had managed to make out the murmurs. WileyKat, too, but he had not reacted like the others.

He kept his eyes on Cheetara's breasts, he kept his eyes on her beauty. There were more giggles. He squirmed under Liono's grip to turn around, to not face the other adults.

"You won't have that fixed properly for a while and that's a good thing. Instead of wasting your time playing and frolicking around all over third earth, you'll be with Tygra, studying."

"What?"

"You heard me, you are to be Tygra's squire, he's you master and mentor."

"OK," he said. He bent his head down. He could clearly see his and Liono's feet.

"Oh, come on, you should be happy, you're growing up the old-fashioned way." Liono ran his fingers down and across WileyKat's bushy mane until the boy began to laugh. "That's the spirit. Go with Snarf to the kitchen, he'll make you something to eat before you go to bed. You should have a good night's rest, you will have a big day tomorrow, a big day. Your apprenticeship will begin promptly after breakfast."

Somewhere down in the depths, in the garage, Panthro's screamed loudly.

"I guess he found your hover-board. Go, go before he come sup to look for you," Liono concluded.

* * *

[Part Five]

"There was no reason for him to be so angry at you, Kat, after all, it was an accident." She spoke while she spooned the mash potatoes and gravy. "We're almost done with the icky vegetables." Her brother was about to speak but she cut him off: "No, no, don't, let me, let me take care of you. You need a lot of that, you know."

She put the spoon in his mouth and he ate of it.

With the spoon up right she continued her mini-lecture for a moment. "How many accidents has he caused with those machines of his? When he built the Thunder Tank he nearly ran over Berbil village." She had already ladled a large fill of the gravy along with most of what was left of the vegetables. "Or that new engine he and Tygra worked on, the one that almost destroyed Cat's Lair. And no body ever yelled at him."

WileyKit put the plate down in the serving tray on the makeshift table. The bedroom was totally dark except for the bright lights of the bathroom behind her, that cast her form in shadows, her silhouette in darkness and the TV that played what programs could be picked up from the interstellar antennae that flashed colors sporadically in the silent chamber. Once again he was taken aback, forced and yet at once utter willing to take in her pefectious beauty.

"We'll teach him, soon enough, I don't want you to worry about that mean old man."

She put a candy cane fruit in his mouth but she let him eat chew on it at his own pace.

"And what about that Tygra? Well, at least you won't be spending so much time ogling over Cheetara. Don't you think I know how you stare at her, undress her with your eyes while you sit in class. You wish we were back on Thundera, don't you, so that your eyes and perhaps your hands, too, could wander and roam freely." She took his free hand into her own and giggle. "Feel me," he ran his hand across her breasts, "I think they're big enough for me right now, but I, too, wonder when or if they'll ever be like Cheetara's. Ah, you don't need her, besides, she's Liono's and she's old, too, real old, too old for you. She would never let anything happen between you and her. You'd have a better chance of being serviced down there by the Warrior Maidens. Oh, don't think I don't know what goes on in that head up there and in that other one." She ran her fingers across his forehead then very quickly, very gently poked him below his belt under his tunic. "We came out of the same place, nothing is strange between you and me and I know all about you, about what you hope for and what you wish for. You don't need any other girl when you have me."

She kissed his hand.

With a napkin she wiped his lips and the sides of his cheeks.

"Go, go wash-up. I have to do something here."

He got up from under her to some more giggles.

"Oh, you," she said, she gave him a little shove.

While he walked into the bathroom he saw her open a small box he had not really seen before, ever before. Its exact nature was unknown. She opened the lid coyly and dropped an object inside with a slight grin.

"Go and don't close the door. I need the light."

He was out of view but the conversation continued.

"Tygra makes me nervous."

"I don't like that I have to, that I have to spend all that time with him. Things are changing so fast it seems like I get to spend less and less time with you. I hate it when things change, Kit, I hated leaving Thundera, I hated when --"

"When what, Kat?" She asked. He had been silent.

"When, when I. When I had to start school. I was so uncomfortable with Cheetara in the beginning. Now Tygra. I know he and Panthro talk about be behind my back. I have to call him 'master'? That's not fair, Kit, that's just not fair. I'd rather have Liono."

He walked out of the bathroom stark naked. His muddy clothes he had sent down through the laundry chute She walked up to him and wrapped her arms around him though to clothe his body with her own, though to wrap herself around him completely, totally, deliberately. She pressed herself firmly on him, she rubbed all the way up and down his back. She withdrew somewhat and began to run her hands across his chest. She giggled at what she then felt -- not at what she alone could see, like before, but at what she could actually feel and without the aid of her hands either.

"They shouldn't treat someone so good so bad, Kat, but don't you worry about that," she kissed him on the lips, she rested her hands behind his ears, "don't you worry about that."

"You are so beautiful, Kit, did I ever tell you?"

"All the time you just don't know it."

He kissed her back, equally if not more passionately.

The bed no longer had the box on it and so he led her to it. He pushed back the blankets and helped her in. Her clothes were already on the floor elsewhere. She guided him next to her and for a while the two, the twins lay silent side-by-side, face-to-face, panting into each other ferociously.

* * *

[Part Six]

"Snarf! Snarf!"

The halls echoed in that low wail. Down in the subbasements of Cat's Lair, oddly better lighted than the esteemed upper portions, the lonely Snarf treaded to his room. He walked across the floor on four legs, barely inches off the ground he had regretted he had not vacuumed earlier. The moldy dust had combound with a stagnant humidity to form coughs and powerful sniffles.

"What a miserable place this is."

The walls were of a thin, brown stone native to the site where the building itself stood. The ceiling was tall but then most everything was tall to him. The floor was also stone but smooth and polished. The large sections of tile shined in the dull light cast by the lamps overhead.

"Why would WileyKat want to live down here? Snarf. Snarf. A boy his age should be up with the others, not --"

The door to WileyKat's bedroom loomed before him. From the crevice he could see that some sort of light was on inside and his first thought, his first impulse was that the boy should not be up but asleep. After all, starting tomorrow, his whole life would change forever. Nothing could ever be the same. Again.

"That boy needs his sleep."

He reached up for the door knob then stopped suddenly. He perched his ear up against the sturdy frame. Up to that point his coughs and his sneezes had muffled the sound but just then it became intolerably clear to him. There must have been animals in that room: the grunts, the snarls, the moans, the groans.

"It must be something from the TV," he tried to reason with himself. Then he remembered the food. "That's right. He took his dinner down here. Well -- Snarf. Snarf. -- that's my department, isn't it? I'll just go in with the excuse that I have to collect the serving tray -- yes! -- and in the process I'll figure out what in Jagga's name's going on around here."

He opened the door. There were two roars, one masculine, one feminine.

"Kit! Kit!" A loud voice called. "Kit!" That last one seemed to go on and on forever, beyond the capacity of the body to prolong the duration of the spoken word.

"WileyKit?" Snarf was confused.

He entered, he walked into the shadows in the recesses of WileyKat's bedroom. All the while the animal sounds had not ceased though they may have quieted a little. Well inside the chamber, Snarf was aware of yet more noises, telltale noises and just as quickly as he had entered boldly he exited cowardly. He dared not even bring the door to a complete close for fear that the sound would only alarm his overt, interloping presence.

Out in the hall Snarf was absolutely horrified.

"His own sister! Snarf! Snarf! His own sister!"

The others would have to know, he would have to tell Liono.

All was quiet again, the whole world was deadly quiet.

"Cheetara. I'll have to tell Cheetara. I'll have to tell her tomorrow. She'll know what to do about this. Snarf. Snarf."

He was oddly aware -- or perhaps paranoid -- that he was being overheard from inside WileyKat's room. Already disturbed and more than quite distraught he turned and began to walk back to his room. When he was no more than a few feet away he heard to his absolute horror that WileyKat's bedroom door had at last but not by itself -- not on itself -- closed shut with a loud click.

* * *

[Part Seven]

The next morning WileyKat was alarmed by the sun light that broke through the windows of his bedroom. He was surprised that his sister was not on top of him. He was also surprised that the felt so tired, so weak.

Slowly he got out of bed and walked to one of the windows where there was less light coming through. He could see the underside of the bridge, the walls of the canyon on the other side of the thin ravine, the dark ravine that separated Cat's Lair from the rest of the surrounding country side.

He turned around still weary, still achy. His legs were sore and felt oddly arthritic. His hands were also unusually spent.

The room was exactly the way he had left it the last night before he shut his eyes. His dinner plates, utensils and cups remained in the serving tray on the small desk. He was astounded that Snarf had not come and picked up those items.

WileyKat moved to approach the table and saw from the corner of his eyes that on the floor next to the bed was the box, was WileyKit's box. Intrigued, he went down to take a better look of it but before he could get any closer his sister entered from almost out of no where in one of those discontinuities of hers. She shook the box and made sure it was closed before she slid it under the bed out of sight.

"Sorry, I forgot to put it away after I came back."

"Came back? Where did you go?"

"I had to take care of something."

WileyKat looked stunned.

"You're tired, aren't you? Oh, there, there," she cradled him in her arms. She let him drop the side of his face down onto her breasts. "You were so nice to hold me last night afterwards. I expected you to just get off of me but you stayed in until the end."

"I don't know, Kit, I feel like I ran a marathon. Are you sure that nothing else happened last night?"

She let go of him and drew back.

"Snarf walked in on us."

He turned white. "What did he see?" he asked.

"Everything."

"Who did he tell?"

"No one and he won't ever tell anyone either, Kat, because I fixed it, I handled it. Just like you fixed my problem yesterday. I returned the favor."

"Kit?"

"You're too good and too decent. You're not like Tygra, your, um, 'master.' Um, what did he ever do? Got himself addicted time and time again to rocks, fruits, flowers. No one ever yelled at him. No one ever called him, um, weird. No one ever talked about him behind his back. And on top of that, he's the responsible one, the trusted one, the leader. Even after he let, um, Mumm-Ra get the Sword of Omens, even after it, um, was his fault the sword, um, was broken. No, it's you who they pick on, my dear brother, it's you who's the target and for what reason? Because of the crime that you love me -- what Cheetara will never have!" She cupped him in her hands and gently, gently stroked him with her thumb. "My noble and sweet brother."

"What about Snarf?"

He kissed her on the lips while she held him entirely vulnerably.

She pressed her forefingers up to his lips to silence him. "He's of no consequence anymore. Trust me. But it's almost time, you'll be late for breakfast." She kissed him once more. "Wash up. I'll wait for you."

* * *

[Part Eight]

WileyKat entered with the serving tray in his hands, he was disturbed by the silence. The kitchen was dark and cold. It was well past sunrise, Snarf should have been there already about to ration out the breakfast. Instead, when he turned on the lights, he found emptiness.

The refrigerator hummed softly. Water trickled from the sink for Panthro had not yet repaired the cold-spigot's washer. One of the fluorescent lights vibrated in the most disturbing way.

He walked further inward, his footsteps resonated in dense, shiny floor.

At the back he put the used serving tray entirely into the deep metal basin of the sink. Next to that, on the black countertop under warm spotlights, in a thick wire contraption was all of yesterday's dinnerware spotlessly clean.

Before he stepped out of the kitchen he walked past the stove -- which was unused -- and opened a side drawer next to the refrigerator. For some reason he could not understand he opened it. Inside was a set knives used to carve meals on special occasions. Except that one meat cleaver in particular was not there and what was more -- he knew it would not be there.

He cracked his knuckles and then and there under the bright lamps he saw that his hands were covered by gashes, scratches, small cuts. Nothing major, nothing overtly noticeable.

"Come on, come on to the table, Kat."

He looked around. One of the heavy kitchen doors swayed forward, backward but his sister he could not see. By the time he reached the exit the doors were sill and it took him more than the usual effort to force them open.

In the dinning hall, seated around the table was Cheetara, an empty chair where Liono would sit, Tygra, Panthro, a wide arc were there were no more chairs, then his own, then at last, at the end was his sister. She sat in Snarf's place.

WileyKat walked around the circumference of the table. The adults -- who had conversed freely -- had stopped silent when they had noticed that he had entered.

He looked at his sister.

He passed Cheetara: "Good morning, Kat, you look tired."

"I know." WileyKat smiled at her. Her nipples showed more than usually through her dress. His sister began to laugh and pointed at him.

He passed Tygra: "Um, we have to talk later."

"I know." WileyKat noticed that there were large numbers of blue hairs on and around the tiger's crotch, in which, by the way, he also noticed the outline --

He passed Panthro. The 'mean old man' grunted and whispered something under his breath while he rolled his eyes. His fur was superannuated, typical for the summer when Thunderians begin to shed.

"I know," WileyKat said.

"Oh, don't we know," his sister continued.

"Stop it you two, there are more important things right now," Cheetara said. "We can't find Snarf anywhere." WileyKat looked at her. "Liono went out to find him."

"Sit down, WileyKat," his sister said. "You'll only --"

"All right," he complied.

"That damned Snarf! Complain, complain, complain, that's all he does! I hope he's gotten stuck in his litter box."

WileyKat's somber state was perturbed by Tygra who had gotten up quickly from his seat and walked around over to his would-be student. Panthro reached out to stop him but it was too late to do anything about it.

The tiger knelt down to the body's eye level and whispered into his ear. "It seems breakfast is going to be late. Why don't we wait until after lunch," WileyKat looked right into his eyes, so deeply, so closely he could see his own reflection in their glossiness. "Cheetara has a few things she wants to do with you and I need a bit more time to prepare myself."

The boy gave no answer. He did not have to, at that very moment Liono stormed into the room violently.

"Did you find him? Did the Sword of Omens show you where he was?" Cheetara asked then she turned around in a loud gasp. She saw that his hands were covered in blood up to the elbows. The fresh blood, the dense red blood, dripped and tickled in the floor in elongated drops. "Snarf!"

WileyKit smiled, she almost giggled but put her hands over her mouth though to try to keep the sounds down.

A window in the back of the dinning room smashed and shattered to pieces. The Thundercats in the vicinity -- Panthro, Tygra and WileyKat -- ran for cover. But it was not a stone thrown by some disgruntled interloper, it was Snarf's body, in flames, with a torn noose around the neck.

Cheetara got up and screamed hysterically, Liono, with his bloodied hands in over his already red hair babbled about water or a blanket to put out the fire. Only WileyKit remained calm and levelheaded but then she did nothing either way inclined.

At the end the flames cleared themselves. The body had not been very badly damaged by the fire because it was wet. It had begun to rain only a few moments before but just then the outside climate worsened with thunder and lighting.

The body, covered in deep gashes and wide rents, did not move.

* * *

[Part Nine]

The central stairwell was lit not from any windows -- the gray concrete walls were featureless -- but from the crystalline skylight. The glass was tempered and a gray color that changed colors from almost clear to completely black depending on the ambient intensity. It was still morning and though it was raining the clouds were not so thick.

The air was damp with fresh moisture. The handrail was coated in a slight film of cold water. The individual steps were of a deeper shade of gray but were not wet. There was no danger in slipping.

WileyKat descended one, then two, then three stories until from the upper halls where the irrationally evacuated dining room resided he was at the same level as the garage. In fact he passed that large room on his way to see Cheetara.

Large chains hung from pulleys on up high from the tall ceiling from within the support framework of thin metal spokes. The design was highly geometrical but had the uncanny air of a spider web unfurled, unwound if such a thing were even possible. The rest of the garage consisted on odd mixture of opened and unopened crates, spare parts held in red containers, miscellaneous tools and supplies along the floor every which way and, of course, the vehicles -- broken. His own hover-board in three pieces and the Thunder Tank, some of its engine was on the floor scattered in chaos.

All the way in the back, beyond the scope of sight even for him, was Tygra's workbench. The tiger worked amidst scrolls of blue paper. He gave his would-be master a quick wave but was unsure if he had been noticed.

Down a wide hall with long fluorescent fixtures he walked by countless doors. One of them opened with the sound of a toilet flush. Panthro stood before him, his right hand on the doorknob. He had an amiable look on his face until he saw the boy. It was incredible how many wrinkles and contortions his brow metamorphosized into.

Somehow, something about that seemed dreadfully familiar to WileyKat. The blue panther said nothing but he did utter a few low grunts and there was a hiss when the boy was the closest to him. For the most part, though his heart raced in fear and in panic he was confidant that nothing would happen to him, nothing physical any ways. He did not answer Panthro but he did stare attentively into his eyes. Panthro deflected his path away from the boy and disappeared in the garage.

Another door opened but that time a friendlier face came to great him.

"Kat," his sister said. She ran to him in open arms from the school room.

"Kit," he hugged her. "I'm so happy to see you, I've missed you."

"We've only been apart a few hours."

"It felt like an eternity, like forever."

"You don't have to hide, I know you were afraid back there. That mean old man needs to be straightened out."

"But I don't understand why he hates me so much. And it's not just because of the hover-boards. Nothing I do ever makes him happy."

"Panthro only gets meaner and meaner every year."

"I stopped trying along time ago, Kit, I don't care about him or what he thinks. I just want to know what I did, that's all, I want to know what excuse he gave to condemn me to this tortured alienation."

"Don't give him that much, not even that much."

The door to the classroom closed shut and for a moment, for a little tiny moment WileyKat thought he saw Cheetara but dismissed it all together.

"I guess I have to go."

She kissed him on the lips and petted him before she, too, disappeared down the corridor behind him.

In the classroom Cheetara stood by an open window with the most spectacular of wide rolling, green with trees that swayed in the noiseless wind. She held a tissue before her face to wipe away the tears. She noticed he had entered from the sound the door made when it shut with a click.

"Oh, WileyKat!"

Cheetara stumbled over to him gave him the biggest hug he had ever had from her. Her hair fell into his face and he very discretely pushed it back with his hand, then -- and then he let his hand drop to her side with all the casual excuse of her own rhythmic rocking.

His fingers felt the warmth of her body but he wanted more. He wanted to run his hands across under her breasts at the least but held back when he heard the giggling. He turned back, broke away from her hold to look around the room but could not find his sister anywhere.

"What will we do today, Cheetara?"

"I don't know. Something terrible happened today. Were you frightened?"

"I was surprised. I didn't think that was going to happen."

She looked at him funny.

"What did you think was going to happen?"

He shook his head: "I'm not sure."

Cheetara got up from the floor on which she had been kneeling. She handed him several sheets of paper and a pen. "Why don't we do this, you'll, write a letter to friend about Snarf's murder, about what happened and what you feel about it."

"Can it be to WileyKit?"

She looked though her eyes were about to burst out of their sockets. She leaned her head back, nose up in the air, hear hair separated and parallel to her body. "Of course." She pulled out a chair for him and helped him to the seat. "Are you all right? Do you need anything?"

"No, I'll be fine."

Cheetara ran her hands across WileyKat's mane and carefully adjusted his tunic because it was somewhat disheveled, somewhat lopsided especially around his legs. He resisted her at the beginning in the way he did lately but then relented at the end. With one more gentle pat of his head she walked out of the classroom.

"Dear Kit," she heard him say under his breath while be started to scribble away on the blank sheet. The empty sheet. Out in the hall she looked to her left, she looked to her right in disbelief.

"Snarf," she whispered, "why Snarf, too, after all these years?"

* * *

[Part Ten]

The examination room.

The ceiling was ten feet high and covered, crisscrossed with pipes and struts of various sizes. Faint droplets of moisture leaked from the cast iron tubes. Small pools of water formed along miniature basins, nearly imperceptible defects that marred the otherwise flat surface. The walls were a light, blue concrete with rough but glossy texture. The floor was a white tile and was shiny.

From thin, horizontal windows perched on the fringe between the ceiling and the vast northern wall great bursts of sunshine mixed with lightning bolts illuminated the interior scene. The strong sounds of the rain hitting the glass echoed loudly. There was no dampness, there was no smell of moisture. Instead the room was inundated with the telltale odor of burnt flesh and hair.

One a small table made from cemented gray bricks at the center of the room was a deep metal dish with a white shoal covering, hugging closely the contours of an unseen object. The thin blanket -- stained yellow in numerous places -- was held in place at the corners by the weight of knives, scissors and other heavy implements.

Three male Thundercats stood around the deep metal basin.

"Are you sure you, um, want to go through this, Liono?" Tygra asked. He looked up to the lion whose eyes had not left that mysteriously covered object since he had entered the chamber.

"I have to, Tygra, I have to."

"You might want to wear this," Panthro handed him a surgical mask, "for the fumes."

"Um, we, um, must all, um, wear them."

After the three suited prepared Tygra pulled back the white shoal. "I had to shave the body, the fire, um, may have been either, um, weak or, um, weakened by the rain but the charred fibers, um, were just too intrusive to the examination. I also amputated the tail," he lifted Snarf's body just a tiny bit to show Liono where the tail was.

"Why don't you start from the beginning," said Panthro.

"Tygra, why does the body look so flat?" Liono held his hand over his already covered mouth. He had to look away but he could not move his head out of the fear that he might gag.

"That's part of the autopsy, I had to remove the internal organs. But let's, let's start from the top."

Panthro put his arms around Liono to hold him up.

"Snarf, um, was hit over the head with a blunt object. See the indentations around the eyes? That's, um, were the blow landed. I'm not exactly sure, um, what the object could have been but by the, um, way the skin in that area bruised you could almost, um, make out the imprint of knuckles."

"He was hit over the head?"

"Yes. That's, um, what I'm guessing at. It's also the only bruise on him. The cuts and gashes that, um, mar the rest of the corpse, um, was inflicted after death, um, when he, um, was hung on a tree."

"The rope, the noose around his neck," Panthro began, "had traces of pine needles, the trees that surround the candy fruit bushes."

"So far that's about all, um, we found --"

Liono momentarily lost track of what Tygra and Panthro said. His eyes roamed the corpse from head to toe and back again. Snarf's eyes were open and bloodshot, blackened, charred from the flames, rotted green and yellow and oddly seemed to still be moist. The mouth was only slightly ajar but he could see clearly the tongue that hung loosely toward the back of the throat, the teeth blindingly white and clean.

The Lord of the Thundercats shook his head violently and managed to break free from Panthro's hold. The body was completely unrecognizable in that hairless state. A part of him, a large part at that, could not believe that his beloved nanny was dead.

"And so cruel and so violent a death," he could not distinguish or control his inner voice from what he spoke aloud. "But you say you found more?"

"The thumb of the left hand is, um, missing." Tygra took Snarf's dead hand and peeled back the fingers to show the jagged stump where the missing appendage had been. "It, um, was ripped off."

"No more."

"Um, well, Liono," Tygra said. He tried desperately hard to delay. "Um, we found a, um, message in his anal cavity."

Liono shot back in utter surprise. Under the white mask the other two Thundercats could see that his mouth, his lips moved in the form of word that he dared not speak, utter. "What, what, what, what drove you to look there?"

Panthro put his hand over his face lucky that his mask hid his smile well but it was another matter to stifle the oncoming laughter. His eyes turned red. The panther walked to the side, his back to the other men, he walked out of the room and when in the hall it was clear -- it was undeniably clear -- that his body shook in the convulsed spasms of uncontrollable giggling.

Tygra kept his eyes down on the ground. He wanted to use the right words but could state the facts only: "A candy fruit, um, was sticking out of his rectum. Apparently that's how the, um, message, um, was jammed up in there, in the anal cavity."

Liono looked up at him with such an intense gaze that his eyes could have popped out, could have actually popped out. He walked backwards into the recesses of the examination room. His mind raced oblivious to Tygra -- who remained in place -- he was completely and totally unaware of the world, of existence, or reality.

"The, um, message, um, was, needless to say, badly stained. Right now it's in the lab, Panthro and I are busy trying to, to, to fix it up so, um, we can read it."

"By when do you think that can be done?"

"If, um, we, um, were to, um, work on it all the rest of today and, um, maybe tomorrow --"

"Do it, do nothing else but that, I want to know what, by Jagga, is responsible for this."

From an air duct hidden within the network of pipes up in the ceiling, WileyKat and WileyKit saw and listened to the whole events while the meeting proceeded.

"WileyKat's apprenticeship will have to wait for later, this problem is far more important."

"I, um, will tell him as soon as I see him."

"All that boy has seen, all that boy has had to go through and now this. We have to be careful with him. Perhaps I should take on the responsibility myself at least for the meantime. In any case, that will all have to wait until this business has come to an end."

"Yes, Liono."

* * *

[Part Eleven]

"This isn't good, Kat."

WileyKat and his sister were back in the safety of their room. After he had helped her out of the ventilation duct he began to reinserted the thin mesh grate over the opening until he heard the familiar click that alerted that it was secure in place. He looked up at her while he arose from the floor. His sister stood by the open windows, the wind ruffled her clothes in the air.

"You did that to Snarf?"

"Be silent."

He had walked up to her side, she put her hands over his mouth to stifle him.

"I did what had to be done. He knew too much, he saw too much and he was more than willing, indeed, he had intended to tell Liono and Cheetara about us. Did you want that to happen? Could you imagine what would follow? You and I, we would be separated. Those, adults, would never let us see or touch each other again."

She moved her hand down between his legs.

"Would you have wanted that?"

She began to stroke him.

"Don't laugh at me when it happens," he looked down on her breasts, he did not see the smile that had formed on her face. His heart raced, he panted for breath. "Kit, that's incredible."

"Let's go all the way --"

"No, we can't," he pulled away. "Snarf's funeral is later today. I don't think we should be doing stuff like that for a while, like that for --"

"You do forgive me, don't you?"

He leaned in closer to her and, with his hands roaming her hair he kissed her lips. "I could never be angry at you." Now he was sly in response, he let his one hand press up against her chest while the other ran up her dress between her legs in return.

"Oh, Kat," she giggled. "Oh, you're so bad!" She lightly palmed him across his chest. "Oh, don't stop, no, don't stop."

Then she turned white, almost ghost while and stared more than usually into the distance. She looked down on her brother and walked away back to the wall, to the darkness of the shadows past the windows. Cold, coldness.

"What's the matter, Kit, did I hurt you?" He ran to her. "I didn't hurt you?"

"No, no, that's not it. Kat. We have to get that message."

"What message?"

"The one Tygra and Panthro found in Snarf. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it, I was so upset, I was so angry at what happened, at what I had to do and at the others. That Panthro, that Tygra, how I want to wring their necks! How I hate them!"

WileyKit cried loudly into WileyKat's shoulder. He held her close to his body in his arms. He rocked her gently back and forth, left and right.

"It'll be all right, Kit, it'll be all right." He lifted her face up to his. "Tonight, when everyone's asleep, we'll crawl up into the lab and we'll take care of that message."

"It's important, Kat, if any of them find it, if they can read it --"

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it. Kit? Did you see how everything worked out well at the end."

She laughed. "Yes. At least Liono will be better to you than that, better than Panthro's 'friend.'"

"Yeah, his 'special' friend."

They laughed together.

"Liono was always nice to us, ever since we were all kids. I don't know what's gotten into his head that now he thinks he's the bedrock of leadership. I bet it's only an act, I bet that, when you and he are along that he goes back to being his usual self. Still, you knew that this day would come, you knew that sooner or later you would have to go through this."

"This growing up. I don't want to be an adult, Kit, I don't what to have all that responsibility. You know what I would do if we lived in paradise I would take you to an island, far, far away and we would live together there without a care in the world."

"Oh?" she asked.

"Yeah and we would be naked all the time."

"Not all the time?"

"All the time, Kit, there wouldn't be any part of our bodies that we would not know completely, totally, intimately."

She blushed. "But what if it gets cold?"

"Then I'll keep you warm, in my bed."

"Tell me you love me again."

* * *

[Part Twelve]

WileyKat had forgotten that the Thundercats had a cemetery -- a flat clearing of ankle-high grass surrounded by old trees. The storm had dissipated early that afternoon but the ground was still moist. Tygra and Panthro -- mostly Panthro -- found that digging the deep hole was rather simple due to the loose mud. The two worked covered in thick canvas overalls to protect themselves from the contamination of the dirt but it must have killed them in that profuse heat of that summer day.

Juxtaposed to that muggy, stagnant scene was a cool, strong wind. The unexpected breezes would momentarily push clouds before the way of the sun and cast the land in a mild shadow, would sway the treetops, would rub branches together and would form sounds of disquiet and of unusual solemnity. On occasion the gusts were so strong that what droplets of moisture that had remained on the green leaves of the tall arbors or on the fluffy tendrils of the trim grass would fly into the air, would rain into the scene though the world itself cried.

One of the drops landed in Liono's eye and he had to rub it away. His eyes were left unusually red, Cheetara's too, but her lips curled though she was about to snarl in revulsion. She clung close to him, her arms draped down across his waste in a semi-embrace.

The air was scented in a misty dew that sent WileyKat back to the green open fields and blue, clear skies of Thundera. He walked around the others. He peered into the hole that slowly, ever so slowly got deeper and deeper. "Just to what depth was Snarf going to be buried?" he thought to himself, "Or are they going to send him back to hell?"

While he explored with his eyes he stumbled upon a headstone, a black rock with faint and withered carvings. The plaque he and Liono had carried from Cat's Lair was identical to that one on the earth under him. Then he remembered that in fact he had been to that cemetery once before, shortly after they had arrived from Thundera.

"Why would they have buried Jagga? After all, we never found his body." He looked around slyly, coyly. "I suppose it could have been out of respect but I just wish I could remember more."

Only the faintest, shadowy visions of the past came to him, came to his mind. He saw Liono on the ground, hitting the earth with his clenched fists. Cheetara was trying to console him, but she, too, cried uncontrollably. Tygra moved around with the shovel, he tried not to speak to anybody. But the strangest thing of all was that Panthro -- yes -- Panthro was actually nice to him. The blue Thundercat paid no attention to his sister and for a few moments WileyKat felt that there was no one else, that there was nothing else in the whole universe except for himself and Panthro, locked together in a deep and warm embrace. He never realized before how much he missed that intimacy. Yet, he did not understand, neither he nor his sister were moved by what was happening or what had happened the way the others were.

"I guess we just never knew Jagga that well," he said.

WileyKit sat on a mound of dirt before him.

"Where did you come from?"

"I was always right here, Kat, you were just too busy in la-la-land to notice. What about Jagga?"

He shook his head gently and ran his hands across strands of hair that had come down before her eyes and pushed them back. "It doesn't matter."

"Those tow are looking at us."

WileyKat turned his head around slightly to see that his sister was right. Liono and Cheetara stared attentively at him. "Just jealous, that's all, those two could never have what we have, Kit, we are one, you and I are one. Two halves of one body, two forms of one soul."

"We better get back. Tygra and Panthro have finished digging up the hole already."

"Do you remember the last time we were here?"

"I don't think we were ever here, Kat, or at least I never was."

"I think I remember some of the details --"

"Don't!" she said uncharacteristically sternly. "Don't. I'm sure there's only sadness and pain. Let's not have any of that stuff today, OK?" She had managed to soften her tone. Her brother nodded his head in compliance and just like that the matter dropped and died.

The twins walked hand in hand to the side of the finished tomb, next to an enormous pile of dirt -- red, black and muddy -- that Tygra and Panthro had unearthed. The two shovels that had been used in the macabre chore stood planted in the loose soil upright.

"The catapult was right in front of Cat's Lair," Liono whispered to Cheetara. "Right at the end of the bridge."

"Tygra told me it was in flames."

"It was a primitive design, easy to build from spare parts."

"Could it have been made by the Warrior Maidens?" she asked.

Liono blinked his eyes suddenly. "Did look like it but I doubt they were the ones who did it. Someone might have stolen the catapult from them."

"There was a trial, a mud trail that led into Cat's Lair but the soil was thin and the rain water did much to erode the evidence," Tygra continued from the pit below.

Liono and Cheetara picked up a long, flat wooden gurney upon which was a tightly-wrapped object. It was clear to everyone present merely from the general form and outline that is was Snarf. He had been thoroughly covered to protect the Thundercats from seeing what had become of their much beloved companion. Those two carefully maneuvered into the pit, they held the gurney by the ends. When they reached the bottom their feet were immersed up to the shins in the soil. Long worms, wet and slimy, crawled all around them.

Snarf's body was dumped down there in the darkness complete with the wooden gurney. WileyKat was sure no one wanted to see that anymore.

The pit was so deep those two needed help to get out. Liono was the first to ascend with the aid of Panthro. He then went on to help up his cheetah. Then while the tiger and the panther looked on crouched on the ground the remainder of the adult Thundercats took the shovels and began to fill up the grave.

At the end, after about an hour from the start, the ground acame to a fresh swell. The loose soil tumbled about scattered in the clearing. Worms and the green snatches of grass displaced from the digging poked up through the new, brown surface. Liono patted down the small bulge of earth as best as he could with the flat, working end of the shovel but he stopped when he saw how futile the effort was. He left that up to nature to correct the matter in its own time.

The headstone fit into place nicely, neatly and almost perfectly parallel to the other, older one abandoned on the side. The lettering on it had been filled with gold. Tygra had said that it would keep the carved letters from fading or eroding at least for a while.

Liono nodded. Then the Thundercats gathered around him in a semicircle before Snarf's grave. "I tried to think of some thing to say but none of what I came up with would make much sense to you all. Snarf was the closest to me, closer even than my own father ever was. I know you're going to laugh or think this unusual but for a while -- no -- for a long while there was a part of me that actually believed he was my father --"

WileyKat looked to his side -- apparently the others were too caught up with emotion themselves, even Tygra, to have noticed. His sister laughed and violently, too. She had doubled over with her arms wrapped across her stomach, she was in pain, her sides ready to burst open, her eyes watered and turned blood red. She was about to cry and it was hard, very hard for him to tell just when her mirth had ended and her sadness had begun.

WileyKit had by that time let go of his hand and free he moved from the outer edge of the semicircle to be closer to Liono and Cheetara at the center. The Lord of the Thundercats had about finished his speech when he looked down on the boy, his sister's laughter-sobs then came from the distance, the faraway distance. He reached his hands out and gently pet the kitten's mane.

"Thundercats," he said, he pulled free the Sword of Omens from the Claw Shield.

"Ho!" the others responded.

"Thundercats --" he looked at the Eye of Thundera, the sword responded unexpectedly.

"Ho?" the mystical image growled, the hilt vibrated.

"Thundercats --" he looked back down on the boy with the strangest, the most frighteningly contorted face.

"Ho."

Then there was silence.

Liono, with his eyes unmoved from the muddy earth turned away from the others. Tygra and Panthro followed him with the shovels that they carried perched on their shoulders. Cheetara took WileyKat's hands and warmed them -- rubbed them in her own. He was nervous that she would notice the cuts and wonder where those wounds had come from.

Instead she picked him up and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around her neck, his chest was pressed up against her breasts. He kissed her on the cheek and then --

WileyKit had been quiet but she now pointed and laughed at her brother. She giggled and jumped up and down in the air almost innocently, almost innocently. Cheetara noticed that there was something wrong, too, she broke his hold around her and moved him off of her body. She held him up in the air at about her eye level at arm's distance. She noticed for more than a fleeting moment that the boy had done more than simply look down upon her, he ogled at her in that way that men were want to and on top of that his own involuntary reaction was both clear and undeniable.

Cheetara put the youngster down and with her hands covering her welled-up eyes she ran away back to the others who were well within the forest trail back to Cat's Lair.

His sister came up to him and whispered into his ear: "See, I told you so."

He looked at her, he was about to cry. "I didn't know she would react that way. Do you think that she still, likes me, Kit? She won't hate me the way Panthro does?"

"I don't know."

"No, I never wanted that, I never wanted things to change."

"Not everything has to." She petted him under his tunic and with that tease and his heightened response she continued: "Over there, by the trees, I'll finish you over there. Would you like that?"

She did not wait for his answer.

* * *

[Part Thirteen]

The tall, thin windows of Tygra's lab were covered in dense, heavy lead curtains. Odd, for there was nothing to block out but the darkness of the night or perhaps it was to keep others from looking in. The vast room itself was cold -- almost freezing -- the humming of the central air conditioners remained static in the background. A dark, blue light bathed over a cluttered workbench.

There was a single sheet of paper in a clear and hollow cube. Tygra placed small iron weights on the corners of the document to weigh to down flat. He slid shut the box and carefully placed it within a larger, metal device whose shape, grossly distorted by the vaporous shadow, reminded the Thundercat of Slythe's profile. He flicked a button and a great burst of light shot out from the cracks and seams of the machine.

"You've been working on that all day," Panthro said.

Tygra looked back, his friend stood behind, the slivers of white light from the large metal device danced across the blue fur of his naked body.

"Why don't you come to bed?"

The dirty overalls they had used hours before lay on the floor between them.

"I have to finish this, Panthro, I need this to be finished." He placed a protective covering over the device and once again the room was in blue light only.

"WileyKat?"

"I have to be his mentor, not Liono. Liono doesn't know --"

Panthro put his hands on Tygra's shoulders, the tiger his back to him.

"This is the last round of treatment, the message --"

"Can it be read?"

"Barely. No, it can't be read easily. Too many stains, too much water damage."

Panthro stepped up closer to his friend until their bodies touched. His lips met the back of Tygra's ear and he began to nibble softy while he whispered unintelligible grunts and a few recognizable words of affection. The tiger's heart beat faster, his breathing became shallower. The panther let his hands drop but Tygra moved away.

"I don't like how you treat WileyKat."

"Not this again." Panthro turned again and walked to one of the blocked windows.

"It's important to me."

Panthro peeled back some of the heavy coverings.

"That boy --"

"That boy is important to me." Tygra paused and reached out for a chair. "Everyday I feel like a failure around him, like somehow he can see right through me. Size me up. Measure me as a man. More than anything I know I have let him down, there's something I did, there's something he expected from me that I just could never ever give him. I don't know but that's what it feels like to me. That's why I need to do this. I have to be his teacher because maybe then I'll put to rest those demons that claw and tear at my heart."

He looked back at Panthro, he could see him entirely -- his eyes had adjusted at last to the near absolute darkness of the lab.

"What could have ever happened between you two that could have soured you like this? What could he -- a small, lonely boy -- have ever done to you?"

The panther nodded and shook his head at once, at the same time.

"Tell me."

"He's different."

"What sort of an excuse is that? You don't think that maybe your attitude has contributed -- to no small degree -- to what he's been like ever since? Cheetara tells me that he can sense our feelings and that he's more than aware about your indifference to him and you don't think that has anything to do with his behavior? He's 'different.' And aren't we 'different,' too?"

"That's not the same. What we have is not the same."

"There are no differences! Or you accept him without question, love him as your fellow Thundercat or --"

"Or?"

"Or to hell with the Code of Thundera. Why hide behind this pretended morality? Loyalty? Friendship? Why shouldn't we just all become animals again? Separate back into the enclaves of beasts --"

"I don't like what I get from him. There's evil there, can't you see it? That boy's been nothing but trouble, he's had a hand in all the ill that's happened here since the accident with his sister and I wouldn't be surprised if he had something to do with that, too."

"Panthro!" He stood up.

Panthro stopped. He had caught himself, he had bitten his tongue. "I'm sorry."

Silence.

"I shouldn't have said that."

"That you could think that he would --"

"I didn't mean it --"

"By Jagga, you didn't!"

"Please," Panthro ran to his side, "please." He held him by his striped forearms. "I take it back. Don't be angry at me."

"You just don't have to be so --"

"I can't promise you much but I'll try --"

"You would make me so happy." Tygra began to cry. "It's important that he can trust me and bond with me."

Panthro had him wrapped in his arms in a hard embrace. He plated with his mane.

"I know, I know."

From somewhere in the background came the telltale sound of metal clamping on metal.

"What was that?"

"It's nothing, it happens all the time." He looked down on the blue Thundercat and that time he let his own hands wander. "If you promise to be nice," he said while his fingers ran gingerly across Panthro's nipples, "I'll promise to --" he whispered into his friend's ear.

The panther laughed. "All right, then I promise, I promise."

"Why don't we go take that bath --"

"Now?"

"It's not too late. You've finished the Thunder Tank, most of everything else and I certainly have nothing else to do. Why shouldn't we indulge just a little bit?"

"OK," he giggled, "I'll protect you so you won't have to be invisible, so that I can enjoy seeing every part of you, my little kitty katty!"

WileyKat held onto the wire mesh of the vent portal for dear life. He had miscalculated the force of his strength and had almost knocked the grating onto the floor in a loud din.

"I thought those two would never leave!" His sister said. "Careful over there. Let the grating slide across gently."

"I know that, I've done this before."

"What? Got caught before, too?"

"Keep your voice down."

The metal plate covering landed on the floor soundless and WileyKat and WileyKit eased themselves free from the cramped passage.

The sound of giggling and running water came from the bathroom all the way down the end of the interior hall that wound out of the enormous laboratory. Strong white light came from the open doorway and as the twins got closer they could see faint steam clouds swarm around in the interior. The doorway was really only half open.

He peered through the long, thin crevice between the wall and the door. Tygra's back was to him, the tiger relaxed back within the large tub that slowly began to fill with water. Just then, in front of the tiger rang Panthro's loud, booming voice but the Thundercat did not approach the door, rather he slipped into the tub facing forward. Tygra leaned up to him and the two locked lips for no more than a mere moment of passion.

"Gross," WileyKit said. "Thank Jagga they don't do that around us."

The adults stopped suddenly. Tygra turned his head around while Panthro merely stared blankly into space. WileyKat was sure that Tygra had whispered or had at the least had mouthed his name in confusion but he could not tell for he had dragged himself and his sister back deep into the darkness.

Though his heart raced in terror and adrenaline rushed throughout his system, WileyKat found it almost impossible to keep his eyes opened. He would move them to look around and they would seem so dry, so painfully dry that he felt almost completed to close them. When he did so it was hard for him to open then back up again.

"What's the matter, Kat?" His sister asked. The twins had crawled back to the large laboratory chamber.

"I don't know what's wrong but for some reason I can't keep my eyes open."

Tygra laughed in the distance and there was the prolonged sound of water splashing, thrashing, hitting the cold, hard floor that surrounded the bath tub. The running water from the spigots had been cut off so the two could hear what was happening quite well.

"That doesn't matter, this won't take long," she turned around to face the lit corridor then back to her brother coyly. "Find the message, it must be hear somewhere."

"He said it needed to be treated so I'll take a glance at what machines --" he yawned -- "he has running right now."

"Good," she shook him, "that's good start. Check the drawers out first, though, just to make sure." She looked back at the hall. Her brother was wobbly, he could no stand still or upright for that matter and he kept yawning and yawning. "Are you sure you'll be all right? I can help you look --"

"No, no, I can find it. We'll just stick to the original plan. You keep a look out for me."

"OK." She kissed him on the lips but he broke away with another yawn. "You're all worn out, but wasn't that worth it?" She rubbed him gently under his tunic.

"That's all right. The sooner -- the sooner we can -- go -- bed." His speech was slurred, his words incoherent. He fell, he stumbled down into this sister's awaiting arms and that was all he could remember.

* * *

[Part Fourteen]

WileyKat awoke that morning, sprawled naked on his bed. His left leg and arm were both intertwined with his sister's right side. The sun was out and shone in throw some of the open windows, the rest was shadow cast from the extended draw bridge. There was an odd silence from all around Cat's Lair and in the confusion of his groggy and still half-asleep mind he could not recount the events of that night.

"My sweet," he kissed her cheek but she did not respond. "It must have been quite a night."

Carefully he managed to crawl his way out from under her and without disturbing her rest he sat himself on the edge of the bed. He put his head in his hands while he rubbed his eyes. That was when he noticed there was something wrong.

His hands were covered in blood and fresh, new gashes, new scratches.

He panicked. He looked back on his sister. WileyKit was unharmed, the blankets, the bedclothes unstained. Only his palms and then he saw that between his legs, too, his fur was tainted with both fresh and crusted blood.

WileyKat grabbed a fresh green towel and headed to the bathroom in the back of the bedroom. Before he stepped into the small antechamber he looked back on his sleeping sister. He never noticed it before but she was missing her thumb on her left hand. He stopped in the doorway to the bathroom, whose fluorescent lights were only slowly coming to life and wondered for awhile about that, about why he had never paid attention.

Once again he was surprised. Already well past sunrise and there was no activity at all in Cat's Lair. Under the running water of the shower head he rinsed himself off as best as he could.

"Will all the oceans of third-earth ever wipe this blood clean? Where do all these scratched keep coming from?"

He noticed he had a lot of blood down around his --

Cheetara screamed. She yelled something but the distance and her hysteria made her words unrecognizable. She pounded on the floor while she jumped up and down.

His heart pounded: "What happened last night?" He turned off the water and dried quickly. He grabbed a fresh tunic newly cleaned from the laundry. None of the mud and blood stains were anywhere on it.

WileyKit was no longer on the bed or in the room. She was gone. The mysterious box she kept was left clearly out in the middle of the room just next to the underside of a table.

"Why doesn't she learn to clean up after her self," he muttered. He had the inkling to go and to explore the box but Cheetara screamed again and so he left the bedroom to investigate the strange cause of the early-morning commotion.

* * *

In Tygra's lab he found everything pretty much the same way he had remembered and supposed to have left it the night before. The vast room was still darkened although someone, no doubt Cheetara, had peeled back the heavy black coverings of one of the tall, thin windows.

Through tables crowded with scraps of metal, bent, corroded, machines and devices of all manner and variety, WileyKat walked forward to the hall at the end of the lab where bright lights and soft, spoken sounds were emitted.

"How?" Cheetara asked. She had her head buried in Liono's shoulder. The two stood embraced, hand-in-hand over the and before the gray, metal tub. "How can this be happening? Who's doing this? For Jagga's sake, who's responsible for this?"

"I don't know, Cheetara, it's not the mutants, not the lunatics, not even Mumm-Ra. The mutilation's too disturbing, too sick even for them. No, there's a different sort of evil --"

"Evil! I can feel it, it's still here, Liono," she drew back from Liono's body to reveal --

"No! No! No!" WileyKat screamed and ran back, back from the fringes between the door and hallway, back from the laboratory to the shadowy oblivion of the interior of Cat's Lair.

Tygra and Panthro were still in the tub, still submerged in the soapy water. Their heads leaned back over the rim, dead, blood had trickled down from their noses, their lips. Eyes were wide open. Fur stood on end. The hands stood firmly erect over the water in the throws of rigor mortis. The left hands, mangled and torn, were missing the thumb.

A toaster hung into the water from a black electrical cord. It was still attached to the power outlet. Steam and a faint smoke evolved like a mist from the water in the tub.

"WileyKat."

Liono held her back. "He can take care of himself. Don't worry about him."

* * *

Cheetara shivered, huddled on a chair in the dining room. The tabletop glimmered -- small fragments of green glass remained, sharp and thin. The air reeked with the smell of burnt flesh and hair. All over there was the omnipotent aura of death and darkness, though the sun was out in a clear, blue sky. A thick shadow covered her in its wake -- the broken window had been covered up the last night by Panthro with a wooden board.

Liono entered slowly. He held a white sheet, a parchment in his hands. "Are you feeling all right?"

"I've calmed down a little."

"I haven't touched their bodies. I don't I ever can but I know those two can't be kept there for ever that way."

"What have you done?"

"I took out the, toaster, I drained the water. I tried to get their arms down but --"

"Oh, Liono," she got up quickly and held him in her arms. She kissed him but he continued.

"The eyes, I closed the eyes."

The two Thundercats were silent for a while.

"The message?"

He unraveled the parchment before her. The paper, though meticulously cleaned, smelled with the odor of where it had been. "I found it in one of the machines in the lab. I think this is as good as it gets but I can't make any sense of it. The words are all random, all almost illegible."

She took the sheet. She skimmed it. She looked back up at him. "This is the paper found in Snarf?"

"Yes. This is the one."

"But it, can't you, doesn't it look familiar. I mean you surely must have seen this, something like this before."

"No, I don't follow you."

"Come with me."

* * *

In the classroom Cheetara scrambled through several notebooks and loose leaf papers. "Look at them," she said.

Liono took one of the sheets and put it side by side with the curled document. "The handwriting, the handwriting, Cheetara."

"It gets worse. WileyKat wrote this one yesterday, after the Snarf's body crashed through the window."

He looked at the paper, it was identical, it was absolutely identical. "What did you think of this when he gave it to you?"

"Just that he was emotional. The random words, they're the product of --"

"Of what? Of what? Where is he? Where is he?"

He stormed out of the room. He let the papers drop in his rage. Cheetara picked them up and trailed him. The Lord of the Thundercats barged down through the hall, down the stairs into the bowels of Cat's Lair.

* * *

"What a mess! It's like two animals live here," Liono said.

Cheetara followed him into WileyKat's bedroom. Clothes dirty and clean littered the floor. Some of the tunics had blood stains, some were encrusted with blood, yet others were marred by the stains of another, unknown substance.

"The bathroom's empty but he did take a shower in it. The mirrors are still foggy."

"Liono," she said, "I noticed something about the words." He turned to face her. "On the papers. The words are not all random."

Liono stumbled toward her in the awkward calamity the room was in. "So there is a message."

"Here," she pointed to a set of phrases in the center of both papers, "those words are about the same size and shape, the whole rest of document was written around them."

"Yes, it does stand out from the rest, Cheetara."

While he read the letter where she had pointed she, too, explored around the empty bedroom. "No, he's not here, Liono, the evil has lifted from this place."

"Listen to this: 'Gross, sister said, wouldn't touch me, sister said, wouldn't touch me, angry, wouldn't let me touch her, anymore, wrong, angry and wrong, angry, I couldn't stop myself, I couldn't stop what I had to do to her.'"

The two were stunned silent.

"A box, I found it on the floor next to the table. It's full of something."

She gave him the box. It rattled in her nervous hands. It resonated loudly. The box was tin and shiny. The lid as well as the sides of the main body would bend in slightly when pressed firmly.

Under the lid, scribbled in black ink were the words that Liono read aloud. "'Anyone who opens this box will die, Wiley --'" To be sure there was a 'k' and a 't' in the name but the character in the middle he could not make out. It seemed to him to be both an 'a' and an 'i' superimposed one over the other though the word was written in error and only hastily corrected.

He opened the box and shot aback in horror.

The box fell onto the floor, onto a clear part of the floor. Cheetara screamed and darted to the side, too. Neither she nor he could keep their eyes off of what spilt out.

Thumbs. Thumbs. Thumbs.

Everywhere.

She looked at him, he looked at her. The two Thundercats went down on their knees to sift through the gory details. Liono pointed them out, Cheetara would move them to the side. "Panthro, Tygra, Snarf!"

"What about those?" She picked one up. "It's not old, it's recent."

"I can't recognize it."

"And this one. There's nothing but bone, Liono, it's small, it's his own sister's --" she turned to the side and threw up on the already cluttered floor of the bedroom. She pushed her hair aside and ran into the bathroom.

The thumbs had been cleaned, the bases where they had been cleaved from had been tied shut with the excess flesh so that no bone or internal structure of any kind stuck out of the end. The nails had a heavy black marking that began from just down the tip and continued up through the trimmed edge of the nail to the ridges of the fingerprints on the other side of the severed appendages. Along the top of the large knuckles was another black mark -- a line that went perfectly across around the circumference.

He stood up suddenly about to loose his own meal, too.

"Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight --"

* * *

On the field of yellow grass next to the river Liono parked the roving Thunder Tank. In silence the only sounds came from the river. The air was calm and still. There was no movement in the trees, or in the surrounding underbrush.

The two Thundercats got off board and walked to one of the many large stone monoliths that dotted the flat clearing. On the side was WileyKat's hover-board, most of the damage had been repaired but the frame of the body remained badly mangled. Panthro had not yet gotten to that.

The rock had been haphazardly moved to the side to reveal a large hole in the ground. Liono and Cheetara looked inside. A red glowing light came from beneath, from the caverns below.

"How do we get in?" she asked.

He pointed to the river bank. "There's a large opening in the marshes."

"Tygra, Panthro, Tygra, Panthro," a male voice spoke.

Liono and Cheetara crept through the darkened interior of the subterranean passages toward the source of the only light. A chamber lined with luminescent fungi. A chamber from which two voices echoed.

"I said those two would pay," the female voice broke. "I said so, Kat, now they can't harm you anymore."

"But all we wanted was the letter."

Liono held Cheetara's hand while the two reached the only entrance into that small room. They stood behind the jagged rocks. They stood in the absolute darkness while they watched in horror.

"But all we wanted was the letter. Liono was going to be my mentor, not Tygra, not Tygra. There was no reason to kill them!"

"My dear brother, you are too noble, too loving. They had to die, don't you see, they displeased you."

"And what about this man? How did he displease me?"

"He touched me. While I scavenged through the trees he came up to me from behind and began to touch me."

"Kit. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Kit?" Liono asked Cheetara. She, too, could not believe what she was hearing. They walked silently into the chamber. WileyKat's back was to them always from the start.

"Don't be mad at me, Kat, here, let me do that. You like it when I do that."

"Kit, something has to be done about all of this."

"But you killed Kit," Liono spoke suddenly, sternly, "just like you killed Snarf, Tygra and Panthro, just like you killed that man, there, with your hover-board."

It did not seem to them that WileyKat had heard anything that Liono had said.

"You took their thumbs, you stood on your own sister's grave, you --"

"Oh, Kit!"

Cheetara gripped the boy's shoulder and turned him around quickly. He stood before them with his hands over, running over, rubbing over himself swiftly, violently. Liono tackled him to the ground.

"You killed them, you killed them!"

"Liono, what are you doing here," WileyKat asked in total shock. "No, no, he knows, he knows now," the boy spoke in a female voice.

"He sounds exactly like her, Liono, exactly like WileyKit."

"Get off of me! Get off of me! Kat, help! Kat help!"

"No one's going to help you --"

"You're going to die, Liono, you're going to die. Kat doesn't need you, he doesn't need you --"

"He's turned into an animal, Liono."

WileyKat snarled and growled, he salivated foam, his nails clawed into Liono's flesh. He tried to flail his arms, his legs moved wildly. He screamed, he yelled in both voices.

Suddenly he was calm, suddenly he lay still on the ground.

Liono stood up gradually. The boy's hands were covered in blood and scars and so were his feet. With his toes he had cut Liono across the stomach in three or four parallel gashes, not deep but which oozed blood nonetheless.

He looked at the boy, he looked at Cheetara, he put his hands down along the scars and stopped the bleeding. She ran to him to help him and with that the two Thundercats began to walk away, back away. WileyKat remained on the floor motionless but it was quite clear to them from the quivering of his lips that he conversed with someone who was not there, not there at all.

The last thing they heard before they left the underground caverns: "I am evil," but then the voice was not feminine, not masculine any longer, it was a new and unheard amalgam, a bone-chilling mixture, "I am good. Kat, Kit, Kat, Kit. Ha, haha, hahaha, haha, hahahahaha, mwahahahaha, ha, ha."


End file.
